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Save Our Children’s Centres

I don’t have a very political brain, but I sure do have a very passionate one. I’m trying to learn more about politics and I’ve recently joined a local online Facebook politics group.

My problem is that my views are very ‘tunnel visioned’ and I struggle to understand the opposing views as I feel uncomfortable and frustrated when someone hasn’t got the same view as mine! I even struggle to debate on politics with my own Father! I will back down if views become conflicting, in the past I’ve changed my views to match those of the opposing person in order to avoid confrontations at all costs!

However, I want to explain why I won’t be voting for the ‘Blue Team’ (as Lou would describe it!) this Thursday 8th June in the 2017 General Election. The following post I wrote last year:

Explains why I stood up at the local Council Scrutiny meeting and shared my family’s story of the vital service of ‘Family Support’ delivered via Family Support workers from the Children’s Centres in Worcestershire. To recap the local Conservative government cut vital services to children’s centres in the Worcestershire area and as a result we no longer qualified for a family support worker. The local Conservative government promised that “No Children’s Centres will close,” but we found this to be untrue for cases such as the ‘Orchard Vale’ centre in Evesham, where I visited 2 weeks ago, the sign covered over with a mass of leaves, and when peeping into the window where there was once an office with smiling faces there is now no one there, the room where I took my youngest child to see her Health Visitor is no longer in use, and the room where I once took her for the baby ‘stay and play,’ which used to be full of mothers and their babies is now an empty room.

I wrote to Cllr Bayliss and he passed me onto his ‘officer’ who looked into my family’s case file without my consent and proceeded to tell me that “you’ve received your full package of support.” In the end I had to block Cllr Bayliss on Twitter as I couldn’t stand to hear any more excuses for the cuts to vital services, and his ‘but I’m ok’ general persona. When they told me that we “no longer qualified for support” my eldest child wasn’t under the Umbrella Pathway for Autism assessment, her behaviour at home wasn’t as extreme as it is now. I wasn’t under assessment for adult Autism, my youngest child, now 2 didn’t have a diagnosis or additional needs and now does and we hadn’t received the paperwork back clarifying that my partner of 7 years has moderate learning difficulties and requires literacy support. We now have triple the difficulties functioning as a family today than we did when we received family support back in 2015. But still no support. Parenting is hard in general but parenting 1 or more children with Special or Additonal Needs is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, I truly believe that all families that identify as have a child or children with Additonal needs and wants support at home completely needs and deserves this support without any doubt.

I’ve recently tried to re-refer back to the family support service but still do not hold out much hope, my eldest daughter’s school are also doing all they can to help and they are also aware how vital this support is for our family.

But it’s not just us, I wanted to share our story as I know we are not the only ones in the same situation. And it’s not just the children and families service that has been cut, I recently rang adult social care and they cannot offer us any support either because my partners care needs are “not severe enough,” even though I’m supporting 2 children and an adult in the household I’m still just left to “work it out.” I’m firing on all cylinders and close to a complete shut down, yet we still don’t qualify for any help.

I really do hope that something positive comes from the general election.

All political parties have different campaign promises, but my vote will go towards one of the parties that supported the Worcestershire ‘Save Our Children’s Centres,’ campaign to the bitter end.